


hidden affections

by a_wonderingmind



Series: Selected Affections [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alien Shenanigans, Companion Piece, Episode Tag, F/M, Howard Stark (mentioned) - Freeform, Married Couple, and misses his wife, aos 7x03 canon compliant, daniel is fed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:09:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24742087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_wonderingmind/pseuds/a_wonderingmind
Summary: A companion fic for Agents of Shield 7x03, based on the premise that Peggy and Sousa are married.I'm not sure how many timelines have to be upset to bring this around, but time travel makes my head hurt so I've politely put all that to one side.unbeta'd, so all mistakes are my own!
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa
Series: Selected Affections [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801873
Comments: 31
Kudos: 96





	hidden affections

Daniel vastly preferred driving to flying, he thought, as he pulled up to the hut they had set up. It was nice to not have to worry about where he was going, sure, but the presence of other passengers never really allowed him to relax. Having the car to himself allowed his mind to switch to other tracks. By all accounts, this Sharpe guy in from DC was an ass. He would have to steel himself. 

He opened the door and his leg went first, followed by his cane and the rest of him quickly after. Even after a couple of years, he was again thankful for the unencumbersome nature of the cane.

“Science team arrive?” he called to the lieutenant.

“This morning.” The poor guy looked distinctly unimpressed. He could probably chalk that up to Sharpe’s reputation.

“May need a moment with the contact,” he stated, heading towards the door.

“Okay but Sharpe, the man in from DC,” he paused, “he’s uh, already interviewing them.”

“He is?” 

That stopped him in his tracks, if only for a moment, but that should have been his first clue as to what a day this was about to turn out to be.

“Yeah, and they brought a SHIELD dame along,” 

What? He had spoken to Peg just the night before last. She couldn’t be here, could she? He slowed, contemplating what possible chain of events could lead to her being here.

“British. Pretty. She outranks us.”

So definitely her then. Whipping his glasses off, he tried to remain unaffected, but it sounded like surprise to his ears.

“Catch her name?”

“Carter.” There it was. “Peggy Carter,”

He pressed his lips together unconsciously. Of course. He knew Capitol Hill meetings were tedium of the most concentrated quality, but SHIELD needed every modicum of reputability it could glean. The husband in him was very happy though. It had been far too long.

“You know ‘er?”

He held back a sigh and tipped his head in acknowledgement. “You could say that,”

It was probably a little dramatic of him to put it like that (I mean, he _did_ know her, in every way possible) but in his mildly exasperated state, he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

* * *

Tumbling along the corridor he could hardly believe that she had managed to get here so quickly, somehow. He probably had Howard to thank, in some measure, but also he had Howard to thank for the reason she had to be in DC, so he wasn’t inclined to be too grateful.

Passing a door with one way glass on it, he stopped to fix his hair. He tried to flatten the cowlick that had escaped him this morning, and caught a glance of his greying temples. Salt and pepper, Peg called it, distinguished. He made a face. It just reminded him of Pai.

Opening the door, he took in her figure. Most of it was obscured by the chair she was sitting in, but she had on a new fascinator, and her hair was done up shorter than usual. Then again, she had had a haircut just before she went. He couldn’t help the little smile that bubbled up.

He took a deep breath and stepped forward, almost calling her by her familiar name, before deciding against it and taking another moment to take in her relaxed posture, elbow against the back of the chair. 

There was a reason they kept their marriage off the books, after all.

“Agent Carter.” he smiled.

“In the flesh,”

Except when she turned, she was decidedly not Agent Carter ‘in the flesh’.

It wasn’t Peg at all.

Trying to hide his surprise, his face hardened.

“Well, glad to finally put a face to the name,” he said, putting a hand on his hip, close to his holster.

He regarded her for a second longer, and tried not to pay much attention to the disappointment he felt, or the anger slowly beginning to bloom.

Not-Peg smiled blandly at him.

* * *

He tried a few openers on for size, then discarded them. Charm was the way to go, it could easily be interpreted as sucking up to the boss. Better not to show his cards.

“I gotta say, I’ve waited a long time to meet the famous Agent Carter,” he started. Not-Peg smiled graciously.

“But I’m surprised to find you here, running a security op, in our little patch of desert,” 

He schooled his face, keeping a neutral smile.

She sighed, “Mm, I apologise for the short notice, but we had to act quickly,” He pretended to look interested. “I believe this base may have been infiltrated,”

Her t’s were too flat. You’d think if they had the resources to find their way onto the base they could at least hire a good dialect trainer.

He could barely keep the sarcasm from his voice. “No, imagine that, an infiltrator right under our noses,” 

His gaze flicked back to her.

She picked up on his tone. “And you arrived just this morning, Agent…?”

“Call me Daniel,” he said pleasantly, flashing her a smile and taking a step forward. Charm, Rose had taught him, was an effective way to disarm someone, but getting up in their space was equally effective in establishing who here had the upper hand.

“Daniel,” she acquiesced. “And where did you materialise from?”

“Oh, just flew in from LA,” he shrugged casually, taking another step closer.

“Ah,” she said, a little unsure. He could see in her eyes she was realising something.

“You work at the old SSR office,” she stated, and he planted himself firmly in front of her and regarded her, friendly expression abandoned.

“I’m in charge of it.” he said in lowered tones.

Her eyes dropped to his cane, and she looked up at him.

“Daniel,” she said in a false calm, “your surname wouldn’t happen to be Sousa?”

“It would.”

She breathed out. “Which would make you the former colleague of Agent Peggy Carter.”

“It would,”

And current husband, he thought, but he didn’t say that out loud. He pursed his lips instead. And pulled his gun, but held it to his side so as to not startle anyone.

She looked at the gun as he tilted his head in annoyance.

She sighed again. “Well, I suppose you’ll be arresting me now,”

“You got it all figured out, dontcha?”

It didn’t take long for her to give up her partner in crime either. Almost too easily. He could have sworn the man mumbled something vaguely like his name as they arrested him. Something didn’t sit right.

* * *

“Keep those two in holding and get me everything: visitor logs, timecards, anyone on patrol,” 

He turned to the man. “Lieutenant, I wanna know exactly how these two jokers got onto the most secure SHIELD base in the Western United States.”

He needed to get to his office, call someone in. Peg, if no one else. This was turning out to be a disappointing day, to say the least.

He opens the door to find… another woman. Looking over the plans on his desk. Come on.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Who I am is on a need to know basis,”

For Pete’s sake. “I need to know.” he said sarcastically, gesturing at his door.

“Ah. No, you don’t,” she replied. With all the confident airs of the not-Peg earlier. “Because I don’t exist and we never met. Now can you shut the door, please?”

Oh, so it was this game we were playing, was it.

“Not to be rude, but, it’s been one of those days,” Hell, it had. “So produce some credentials or I’ll put you in handcuffs.”

To his mild surprise, she actually handed him a card.

“I should inform you that’s not my real name. My initials are C, I and A, catch my drift?”

There it was. “Subtle, but yeah, I get it.”

“I’m also gonna call your bosses in Foggy Bottom and confirm it,” he gestured to the telephone.

“Oh, please,” she started, before commenting on exactly the thing he had barely had time to tell anyone else about. He eyed her suspiciously. 

“How’d you know that?”

“CIA. We know all.”

Fantastic. “Even about you, Mr. Sousa,” she eyed him, and made a moue. His interest was piqued when she listed off his wartime records (scout for the 28th infantry, took shrapnel at Bastogne) and some of the more confidential post war cases. (He suppressed a smile at the mention of the Council of Nine; it was distinctly tied in his memory with the young and wild portion of his and Peggy’s relationship.)

Looking down the hall to make sure no one could be listening, he asked quietly, “Why are you really here? Is this about the report I sent you guys?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,”

“Well I hope so, ‘cause if SHIELD has been infiltrated with sleepers post-WW2, we need to root it out, right now, before it takes hold.”

“Look, all I can say is that you are not crazy, and the people that you have locked up might be the key to proving it.”

He considered it for a moment. She seemed willing enough to give up that piece of information. Perhaps they could be of some use to each other.

“Then come with me.”

* * *

They certainly had got jumpy. But Miss CIA seemed to be aware of that. And they had said they were the good guys. After locking him up. There was still something to be squared there if you asked him.

It was a good thing the lieutenant had come across his cane, otherwise he might still be trying to think of a way out of there.

And then he had come across that Sharpe guy and one of his scientists fighting. What he thought was one of his scientists, but from the ID badge that was left in the pile of molten metal after the lights went out, and the fact he had been impervious to his cane’s sharp blow, and able to hold him up and choke him for as long as he did, it seemed there was something bigger than just an infiltration going on. His leg did weigh quite a bit more than most people's legs; even he could barely drag it around for a day. He had watched the guy, machine, whatever, burn up and melt in front of his eyes, for Christ’s sake, and he didn’t quite want to face this without his wife. He really needed to call her.

He reached up to touch the bruising that was surely coming up on his neck. 

“The Director on the phone for you, sir,”

“Thank you Lieutenant. Have a good night.” He smiled at the man, wondering if he also looked as tired as he felt.

“You too sir,” He handed the receiver over to Daniel and nodded as he took his leave.

“Hi.” came the slightly breathless voice through the wires.

“Hi yourself,” he chuckled. “Using official lines for personal business, Director?”

“I wanted to hear my husband’s voice. Is that a crime?” she smiled.

“Not at all.” A comfortable beat of silence. 

“You’ll never believe who turned up at work today, darling,”

“Who?” he could hear her eyebrow raised across the continent.

“You did,” he drawled, injecting as much levity into the sarcastic comment as he could, hiding how worried he was.

“Did I?” she smirked. He could imagine the curvature of her smile, interested and playful. God, he missed her.

“You had the worst British accent I’ve ever heard,” he complained, unable to stop the smile spreading across his face infecting his voice. “I think it might be to do with that report I was writing.”

Her voice darkened. “I thought I told Mr. Dulles they’d have to be careful,”

He shrugged without thinking, voicing his uncertainty in a noncommittal grunt. “How much hobnobbing you got left to do? I could really use a second pair of eyes. The lieutenant is great, but there’s something that doesn’t sit right.”

He heard her sigh reverberate through the telephone wires. “Only three days, dear. Howard is offering me an overnight flight back; as he should, considering he’s the one who dragged me here. I feel I’ve done nothing useful for having to convince them I’m not some innocent maiden, swept up in one of Howard’s madcap schemes.”

He’d witnessed a couple of those conversations himself. He sympathised.

“I love you, Peg, and anyone who can’t see all the work you put into SHIELD is a grade-A moron.”

“You don’t say,” she chuckled. “I love you too, Daniel. I can’t wait to be home. I - Howard, what now?”

He laughed down the line as he imagined Howard’s expression at her exasperated tone. “Got to go love, babysitting duty calls,” she laughed. “See you on Sunday!”

The line clicked, and he was alone again.

The sooner she was back, and fighting weird alien crime together, the better he would feel.

**Author's Note:**

> I think my poor peggysous shipper's heart needed this.  
> shoutout to that hc that Rose taught Daniel how to be a smooth mf! (there is fic of it, but I cannot for the life of me find it)  
> I'm also around on tumblr @a-wonderingmind !


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